Greylock Partners Leads $4 Million Series A Investment In Payoneer

Â Greylock Partners announced today that they would be investing $4 million in New York City based company, Payoneer.Â Payoneer is a company that allows companies and business partners to pay each other via MasterCard online.Â Payoneer is a private company that markets and manages prepaid MasterCard cards and works with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the First Bank of Delaware to process card transactions.

Upon realizing the importance of developing strong partnerships with Web 2.0 companies, Payoneer currently works with selected business allies such as Metacafe, Amie St., oDesk, and BitWine.Â Using such a service could also be very beneficial for Web 2.0 start-ups with only a few employees that share office expenses.

“The Internet payout space may well become a killer application in the next few years as Internet companies transition to smarter ways to pay out their partners around the globe,” stated Moshe Mor, a partner at Greylock Partners. “Payoneer’s team has deep payments experience, and an already impressive track rate of customer adoption and solutions. We’re delighted to work in partnership with Payoneer to fuel the company’s expanded market presence.”Â

“Web-driven businesses have the unique opportunity to use payments as a retention tool, not just a cost line-item,” stated Yuval Tal, theÂ CEO and founder of Payoneer. “With our additional funding on board, we’ll be adding to our team, expanding our service offerings, and working aggressively to win new accounts during this exciting high-growth time in our market.”Â

Payoneer was founded in 2005 and maintains a research and development facility in Tel Aviv, Israel.Â Â Â The co-branded MasterCards provided by Payoneer can be used anywhere whether it is in any store, online, or ATMs that MasterCards are accepted.

Proven Model Cases:Citigroup Inc./eCount Inc.
“The prepaid card market is experiencing high growth, and is currently estimated at more than $2 trillion worldwide, as corporations and consumers continue to move from paper checks to electronic-based payment methods” states a Citibank press release announcement of the fairly recent eCount Inc. acquisition.

eBay Inc./PayPalAnother proven model is the legendary $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal.Â In July 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock.Â PayPal now has 114 million customers as of October 2006 over 103 markets and 17 different currencies.

It is expected that with this round of funding that Payoneer will become hypercompetitive amongst some of the major aforementioned players out there.Â I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll start seeing the Payoneer logo quite a bit more as we shop online.